There is something too clean in the air.Too smooth. Like a gss that has been polished until the fingerprints disappear.The university is overflowing with efficiency, standardized smiles, optimized trajectories.Everything is in its pce.Except for him.
Soren’s footsteps echo faintly in the immacute hallway, between vitrified walls where discreet holograms are dispyed. Social notifications, performance reminders, glowing badges float around the students. Efficiency bubbles.No one really stops.No one truly looks.Everyone keeps moving.Soren too, he moves. But without believing in it.
He has this peculiar demeanor, almost too calm. A subtle beauty, unsettling, accentuated by the indifference that makes him inaccessible. Some find him fascinating. Others avoid him without knowing why. He speaks only when necessary, and even then. His voice carries something oddly measured, as if he always has one foot elsewhere.He seems distant, but it's not shyness. It’s something else. A fatigue older than him.
He passes by a cssroom. Inside, a professor is enthusiastically discussing “cognitive realignment.” The students nod in unison. Their eyes shine with numbers.Soren watches them. He sees nothing but masks.There’s something sick about this university.But the sickness is soft, comfortable. It doesn’t hurt. It reassures.So no one wants to be cured.
He stops for a moment at the optimizer dispenser. Behind the gss, there are mood management capsules, concentration correctors, emotional filters. He buys nothing. He hasn’t consumed these things in months.He simply watches his reflection, distorted by the gss.His face never quite feels real.
A soft beep resonates in his ear: css has started.He turns, slowly. Walks across the courtyard.The artificial sun suspended in the sky casts a light without warmth, perfect and dead.Like a day copied from another.
The amphitheater is already full when he enters.He slips silently into the third row, always to the left.It’s a habit. A routine. A strategy of erasure.
Today’s css is on group dynamics and emotional self-regution.A model is projected: The System as the pilr of mental stability.The words are pretty. The room is calm. Too calm.A brilliant female voice responds to a professor's question.She’s somewhere behind him.He doesn’t see her.Not yet.But she will be important.He doesn’t know it yet.But something in the tone of her voice creates a subtle dissonance in the perfect structure of this world.
And then, suddenly, for no apparent reason...Soren blinks.And the interface colpses.Just for an instant. A line of text disappears.One word repced by another.Then an empty square. Bck.
[ERROR: Emotional Value Missing]
He stares at the spot where his emotional alignment level should appear.Nothing.Zero.Nothingness.A cold discomfort climbs up his spine.But his face remains still.
Around him, no one reacts.They don’t see anything.It’s as if the world itself blinked with him and then caught its breath.He closes the interface with a mental gesture.He says nothing.He never says anything.
The end of the css comes like a collective exhation.The students rise mechanically. Numbers, statistics, mutual congratutions are heard.People happy with their results.
Soren remains seated a few more seconds.Not because he’s thinking about something.But because he feels something. A crack. A tension. A void.Something is wrong.But he doesn’t know what yet.
He finally stands, hands in pockets, shoulders rexed, almost too much.He walks through the corridor, exits the building.The evening air is warm, controlled. There is never a real wind here.His room is exactly as he left it.Ordered. Cold. Silent.He settles in like one returns to a too-tight garment.The ceiling automatically dispys his daily efficiency average.He doesn’t look at it.He lies down.And in the dark, he thinks about that error.That empty square.That strange word.There was something behind the error.Like a whisper.Like a feeling too human to belong to an algorithm.
He doesn’t sleep right away.He waits for the silence to engulf him.The one he’s carried inside for as long as he can remember.The one he shares with no one.But tonight, in that silence, something stirs.
